All tolls currently in place on the Ocracoke-Swan Quarter and Ocracoke-Cedar Island ferry routes will be waived for residents, emergency personnel and vendors while the bridge is closed and the emergency ferry route is in operation. The U.S. Coast Guard is also currently on standby.

At full capacity on a full schedule, the route can ferry 760 single cars a day, 380 from each side.

The Bonner Bridge was built in 1963 and about 13,000 vehicles cross it during peak season in the summer.

Crews started the process of replacing it back in 1989. In 1990, a barge crashed into the bridge and destroyed several spans. It was closed for a few months.

Since this time, NCDOT has spent almost $56 million to repair, maintain and inspect the Bonner Bridge.

The Draft Environmental Impact Statement was approved in November of 1993. Clyde Coltrane remembers when this happened in 1990. The bridge was shut down for months.

NCDOT says more crews are needed to assess what needs to be done and how long it’ll take.

“You really don’t know when you get over here when you’ll get back,” Coltrane said.

“We knew it was coming, we didn’t know it was going to be like this,” Paul Tate of Rodanthe said.

Friday sonar detected the bridge was in critical shape, four days of worsening conditions made it unsafe today.

“I’d much rather us to be standing in line here or waiting in line here than somebody falling to death,” Tate said.

“If you live on the island you have to be sort of used to this kind of stuff,” Tate said. “It’s the bridge that we have, this should have been taken care of many year ago.”